After a long international screening process, Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai from the World Bank has been selected as Afghanistan’s newest “President-elect.” He will work with a “Chief Executive Officer” also handpicked by the U.S. and NATO. The U.S. and the U.N. Security Council are showing their contempt for the people when they claim that their “nation-building” agenda in Afghanistan reflects “democracy” and the “sovereign” will of the Afghan people.

Turning back to the colonial doctrine of the “white man's burden” U.S. imperialism has declared that some peoples are not yet ready for independence and self-determination and need to be “mentored” and “civilized” by the imperialist powers. The U.N. Security Council, NATO and other international organizations led by U.S. imperialism are resurrecting the old “mandate” system in Afghanistan. Under the slogans of “fighting terrorism,” “fighting a war on drugs,” “weapons of mass destruction,” “nation-building,” “peacekeeping” and preparing countries for “self-rule,” the U.S. and U.N. Security Council are violating the fundamental principles of international law and returning to the days of open colonialism and gunboat diplomacy.

In Afghanistan, the U.S. government continues to defy the will of the people and remain on the warpath. The peoples cannot afford to have any illusions. From day one, U.S. imperialism’s war on Afghanistan was based on the terrorist doctrine of Might Makes Right and used to create a precedent for more wars. Until it is defeated, it will continue to be used as a precedent for more unilateral and multilateral U.S. wars waged against countries which resist the dictates of imperialism. Until it is defeated, it will continue to be used as a precedent for more unilateral and multilateral U.S. wars waged against countries in which the people rise in defense of national independence and economic sovereignty. Until it is defeated, it will continue to fuel tensions and sharpen inter-imperialist rivalries.

But it is precisely the struggle of the “uncivilized” and “backward” people of Afghanistan which continues to strike hammer blows against imperialism. The people of Afghanistan are proving that the struggle for national independence remains on the agenda of the peoples, and remains one of the main motive forces opening the path for the progress of humankind.

So too, when the people of Afghanistan stand and fight for their rights they expose the great weakness of U.S. and world imperialism, which are not only in contradiction with the entire course of human history, but beset with many internal contradictions. When the peoples stand and fight for their rights, they bring all these contradictions to the surface. In these conditions, the peoples will certainly continue to advance and win victory in the struggles for independence and their sovereign national rights.

The U.S. Used Iraq as a Launching Pad for War Against Syria

The U.S. has now used its occupation of Iraq to launch a new aggressive war in the Middle East. On September 23, U.S. aircraft housed in Iraq bombed Syria.

After being forced to admit that its “Free Syria” movement has been about terrorizing the people of Syria, the Obama administration is repackaging old ways to cover over its aggressive, colonial aims in the Middle East. The latest U.S. plan is to white wash organizations trained for years in “Free Syria” camps in Turkey, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere by labeling them “moderate.” The morbid dream of the U.S. continues to be “regime change” which replaces the Syrian Arab Republic with a colonial administration made up of rebels handpicked by the U.S. Secretary of State.

The U.S. bombing is a blatant self-exposure not only of the colonial aims of the war in Iraq, but also of the bi-partisan character of four years of open U.S. support for terrorism inside of Syria.

According to Obama several days before the bombing, “Here at home, I’m pleased that Congress – a majority of Democrats and a majority of Republicans, in both the House and the Senate – have now voted to support a key element of our strategy: our plan to train and equip the opposition in Syria so they can help push back these terrorists. As I said last week, I believe that we’re strongest as a nation when the President and Congress work together. And I want to thank leaders in Congress for the speed and seriousness with which they approached this urgent issue – in keeping with the bipartisanship that is the hallmark of American foreign policy at its best.

“These Syrian opposition forces are fighting both the brutality of ISIL terrorists and the tyranny of the Assad regime. We had already ramped up our assistance, including military assistance, to the Syrian opposition. With this new effort, we’ll provide training and equipment to help them grow stronger and take on ISIL terrorists inside Syria. This program will be hosted outside of Syria, in partnership with Arab countries, and it will be matched by our increasing support for Iraqi government and Kurdish forces in Iraq.”

Today, the aggressive, colonial aims of U.S. wars in Iraq and Syria have been unmasked in front of the whole world. The rich man’s government in the U.S. is once again revealing that it will never restrain itself or voluntarily respect the will of the people.

But in today’s world, it is the people who are the decisive force. It is precisely because the peoples are demanding “U.S. Out of Iraq!” and “Hands Off Syria!” that the tide has turned against U.S. imperialism. The U.S. government has been put on the defensive because its terrorist and dictatorial policies – once they are brought into the light of day and opposed – are rejected by the peoples everywhere.

In the U.S., the political polarization is going to continue and the real task facing us is to strengthen the independent political struggle and anti-war organizations of the people themselves. In the movement for a democratic foreign policy, anti-war activists must show the absolute need for the people to target the imperialist system which is the cause of militarism, war and colonialism in the modern world. In order to put an end to the aggressive wars of our “own” government in the Middle East and elsewhere, in order to place the decision-making power in the hands of the people, the American people must build a movement which breaks the political monopoly of the U.S. monopoly capitalist class and its political parties – the Democrats and Republicans.

The Struggle of the Working Class Against the Generalized Capitalist Offensive

Today, the capitalists are waging a generalized offensive directed against the entire working class. This offensive takes a multitude of forms, including generalized, class-wide cuts in wages and such vital benefits as health insurance and pensions. It includes contracting out, outsourcing and de-unionization. It includes the widespread use of contingent workers (part-time and/or temporary). It includes attacks on labor laws which recognize certain minimum standards and protections for the workers, such as health and safety laws, laws limiting overtime, etc. It includes stripping away the social safety net, such as unemployment insurance, workers’ compensation, welfare, Medicaid and so forth, which helps provide a minimum standard of subsistence.

The aim of the capitalist offensive is to wipe out even the minimal rights and protections gained by the workers over decades of struggle, to turn the clock back to the “free labor” market of the 19th century.

During 150 years of struggle, the working class has come out, again and again, in class-wide, political struggles to assert its rights in opposition to the “rights” of capitalists. Through the trade union movement, the workers asserted their collective strength and, as a collective, were able to enforce a higher standard of wages and working conditions. Through political movements such as the struggles for social security or employer-paid health insurance, workers won, at least partial recognition of their rights as human beings – that they were more than just labor-power whose only reason for living was to be exploited by the capitalists. Through these political struggles, the workers created generalized barriers restricting the degree of exploitation and affirming, at least in part, their rights as human beings; the political economy of the working class gained headway in opposition to the political economy of the capitalists.

The on-going offensive seeks not only to eliminate any and all barriers to capitalist exploitation but also to undermine the collective strength of the workers. By eliminating social protections and destroying unions, the capitalists want to reduce each worker to an individual wage-slave, a wage-slave with no rights that society is bound to recognize, an individual with nothing but his/her labor-power to sell, an individual who can only secure a livelihood at the whim of the capitalist owners. The capitalists want not only to return to the days of the 19th century but to develop new forms of exploitation in line with contemporary production methods, to extract a full day’s work from part-time workers, to force the majority of families to send out two or more wage-earners, to impose the most intense speed-up and overwork.

Thus, in resisting this generalized offensive, the workers must again come out on a class basis and wage a political struggle based on their own aims. In other words, the workers must fight for generalized solutions by asserting and winning such rights as the right to a job or livelihood, the right to health care and secure pensions, the right to be recognized as a collective, etc. In asserting their class interests, the workers erect barriers to capitalist exploitation and create guarantees for their rights as human beings. The workers must make new in-roads against the prerogatives of private property in the means of production and win new victories for the political economy of the working class.

Militarization of the Economy

The Democrats and Republicans keep pouring the funds in the public treasury down the military sink-hole and sacrificing all the vital needs of the people at the alter of U.S. imperialism’s expanding empire.

The government even “diverts” funds from Social Security in order to finance its war program.

The Workers Party has long pointed out that eliminating the gargantuan military budget would immediately eliminate the annual federal deficit and allow the government to make needed social investments to guarantee such basic rights of the people as the right to housing, health care, education, disability pensions and so forth.

Instead, the unemployed and poverty-stricken are denied a livelihood, tens of millions go without health care, schools are left to crumble, etc. so that the maximum amount of funds in the public treasury can be made available for capitalist profit-making.

A vital component of the independent political program of the American working class and people is the demand for a democratic foreign policy, which ends the militarization of the economy, demands the withdrawal of all U.S. troops stationed abroad and an end to U.S. imperialist interference and intervention against other countries.